But heck, since stores started putting the Christmas decorations
up in July, we can get a jump on this, especially since big changes
are coming.

On Sunday, Oct. 29, most Americans will move their clocks back
one hour, changing from daylight-saving time to standard time. We
moved those clocks ahead one hour on April 2.

Oh, it is daylight-saving time, not daylight savings time.
"Saving" is used here as a verbal adjective. It modifies time and
is characterized by the activity of saving daylight. Since "saving"
is a verb describing a single type of activity, the form is
singular.

Yes, I looked that up and, yes, it will be on the final.

Last year, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005,
extending DST by about a month. Starting next year, DST will begin
the second Sunday of March -- March 11 in 2007 -- and go until the
first Sunday in November -- Nov. 4 next year.

DST has been fiddled with before.

Benjamin Franklin first suggested DST in 1789 as a way of having
more sunshine and saving energy (mostly candles back then) but
found no takers. It wasn't until 1916, during World War I, that the
British moved their clocks ahead one hour in the summer. The U.S.
followed in 1918. However almost everyone, especially farmers,
hated it and Congress repealed the law after the war.

DST was used again during World War II. However, between the end
of that war and 1966 the federal government had no DST rules and
communities handled time as they pleased, which was often
confusing.

For instance it remained 1952 in Wildomar until 1965.

Calm down, you Wildomartians -- it's a joke; it's a joke.

In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed a bill creating DST
from the last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October. States
and communities could observe the time change or not, but the ones
who chose to move their clocks all had to do it at the same
time.

In the 1970s, during the Arab oil embargo, the U.S. went on
extended DST for two years, which government studies said saved
600,000 barrels of oil each year, made travel safer and reduced
crime.

Well, we couldn't have that, so in 1975 DST went back to just
six months each year.

In 1986, the law was amended to begin DST on April's first
Sunday.

In 2001, responding to our alleged electricity crisis, the
California Legislature sent a resolution to Congress asking that
states be allowed to extend DST year-round. The events of Sept. 11,
2001, pushed that action to the back burner and it has not been
proposed again.

However, beginning in 2007 we'll get an extra month of
energy-saving sunshine, probably to the chagrin of candlemakers
(and oil companies) everywhere.